Searching for your `soul mate'

June 17, 2001|By Clarence Page. Clarence Page is a member of the Tribune's editorial board.

WASHINGTON — Dear Twentysomethings:

A new poll of your attitudes toward marriage says most of you think the essential ingredient for success is a good "soul mate."

Ah, youth.

Good luck, kids. I wish you the best in your quest.

But you might want to water down your expectations just a tad.

Remember, for example, that most of those couples you see cursing at each other and hurling chairs around the stage on "The Jerry Springer Show" used to think they had found their soul mate, too.

Marriage, like life, comes with no guarantees. Hope for the best but prepare for the worst.

With luck and foresight you might be able to avoid making "the worst" even worse.

I'm only trying to help. Politicians, sociologists, social activists and busybodies like myself are poking our noses into your marital habits a lot these days. Marriage seems to be falling out of favor and a lot of folks are worried about it, especially when it involves kids.

About a third of childbirths in the U.S. are out of wedlock. Recent census figures show the percentage of households that contain the traditional two-parents-plus-kids arrangement is shrinking to record lows, while divorce rates are reaching record highs of almost 50 percent.

So you will not think of me as a single-parent basher, allow me to sound a note of admiration for single parents who do a heroic job of raising their children.

Still, by almost every statistical measure, most children raised by single parents do less well than their counterparts who are raised in two-parent households.

As a result, some states are beginning to take innovative steps to strengthen the institution of marriage. After all, if children are raised more successfully at home, there's a much better chance they will become taxpayers themselves, not tax users.

Some states now offer couples a refund of marriage license fees for completing premarital courses. Oklahoma, Arizona, Maryland and Florida have passed such initiatives as marriage-education classes, handbooks in marriage skills and high school courses in relationships.

These programs are fairly new, so it is hard to tell how much of a difference they will make.

But as one who is married, I recommend pre-marital counseling, dear twentysomethings, and anything else that tempers your deep romantic love with a dose of hard-boiled reality.

"State of Our Unions: 2001," the above-mentioned poll conducted by the Gallup Organization for the National Marriage Project at Rutgers University, surveyed 1,003 married and single adults in their 20s. Almost all said they want to get married and an eye-popping 94 percent believed that "when you marry, you want your spouse to be your soul mate, first and foremost."

Most of you also believe there is one right person, a "soul mate," out there for you somewhere, according to the poll, and you don't think your own marriages will end in divorce.

Well, of course, you don't. If people didn't have faith that their marriage would work, they wouldn't even try it.

Besides, even if you did believe cavalierly in serial marriages, you'd probably lie to the pollsters and say you didn't.

The marriage project's directors, Barbara Dafoe Whitehead, author of "The Divorce Culture," and David Popenoe, a Rutgers sociologist, found a "growing gap" between the ideal and what really happens in most marriages.

But it might be a mistake to look at the marriage rate alone as an indicator of how well a society is doing, says Dorian Solot, co-founder of the Boston-based Alternatives to Marriage Project.

After all, marriage rates have declined and out-of-wedlock birth rates have increased to more than 50 percent in Scandinavian countries, where social-support systems for children happen to be the most generous. Programs like parental leave, flexible working hours and universal health insurance make it easier for single parents to make ends meet and have healthier, happier children.

"I'm interested in how the children are doing, not how marriage is doing," Solot said.

She makes a good point. If we Americans really want to make sure no child is left behind, how far will we go to help them have a good life, whether their parents are together or not?

That's the sort of thorny dilemma we Americans have only begun to address. Solutions, like the perfect soul mate, won't come easy, but the quest is worth it.